The Tracking Angle: Best Live LPs

This article was originally written in 1998.

The Live Albums That Changed the World (Or at Least, My World)

Blue Oyster Cult: On Your Feet Or On Your Knees
Columbia PG33371 (double LP) (1975)

Music 10
Sound 6

The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East
Capricorn SD2-802 ("pink label" double LP) (1971)

Music 10
Sound 8

It's not an exaggeration to say that, to a large degree, these two albums are responsible for making me the guitar player I am today—maybe even to a large degree the person I am today. The influence they have had and still have on me are beyond estimation or quantification, and whenever I listen, I still get the same electric thrill I got back when I first heard these records as a teenager who lived and dreamed electric guitar playing every waking and many sleeping moments. I used to fall asleep, Telecaster in hand, amp still buzzing, after practicing and practicing, trying to become as good as the guitar heroes who dazzled me with their out-of-this-world playing.

That is, when I wasn't literally wearing out the grooves listening to On Your Feet Or On Your Knees and The Allman Brothers Band Live at Fillmore East, two utterly awe-inspiring live LPs whose music shakes my very soul and whose guitarists affect me with nothing less than hypnotic power. You'd best believe the records I listened to while writing this were not my original copies!

To this day, there is no rock band I find more compelling than Blue Oyster Cult, a band that combines brilliant songwriting and musicianship, lyrics that are at times darkly mysterious and at times off the wall, and the ability to rock hard, fast, loud and intense. (They can also shift gears and create music with a slow, smoldering intensity, like the stunning, majestic "Then Came the Last Days of May.")

And there is no guitarist I find more compelling than BOC's secret weapon, Buck Dharma, a man who combines ferocious intensity and energy with seemingly boundless melodic imagination. Where most hard rock guitarists go "weedelee-weedelee-wee" and run the same cliche'd riff treadmill over and over again ad nauseam, Dharma spins out mind-blowing solo after jaw-dropping solo on OYFOOYK (as it is affectionately abbreviated) without repetition, with a soaring, harmonically rich Gibson-through-Marshall tone. Why Dharma isn't mentioned in the same breath as Hendrix, Beck and Clapton et al I'll never know 'cause he sure as hell should be.

On Your Feet Or On Your Knees contains choice material from the first three astonishing—and I mean astonishing—BOC studio albums, Blue Oyster Cult, Tyranny and Mutation and Secret Treaties, including now-classics such as a blazing version of "Cities on Flame (With Rock and Roll)," an incendiary "Hot Rails to Hell" (why not keep the fire metaphor going—it's appropriate as these versions are smokin'), BD's showpiece, "Buck's Boogie," "ME262," the testament to adrenaline that is "The Red and the Black," "Before the Kiss (A Redcap)" and "Harvester of Eyes." (I told you they could be lyrically off the wall; just dig some of those song titles. Another reason why I love the band—one-dimensional they ain't!) In addition, the band (Dharma, singer/guitarist Eric Bloom, guitarist/keyboardist Allen Lanier, bassist Joe Bouchard and drummer Albert Bouchard) rip through the Yardbirds' "I Ain't Got You" and Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild," complete with cacophonous crossed-guitars finale (yep, BOC used to end their shows with Bloom and Dharma rubbing their guitar necks together at full volume; kinda makes a train wreck sound like Zamfir by comparison).

If only the sound were better—the recording is murky-sounding, with a somewhat indistinct mix, rumbly, hard-to-hear bass, truncated dynamic range and a spatially flat perspective. Oh, you can hear everything OK, Dharma's guitar cuts through the mix the way it should and there's decent upper midrange presence, but it sounds for all the world as if you're listening in the middle of a large-ish hall with bad acoustics. Then again, it could be argued that that's a totally realistic portrayal of what a lot of rock concerts in the Seventies actually sounded like. It sounds a lot better if you turn it up to louder than average volume; then, the instruments cut through more with vastly "improved" presence. Still, the music is fabulous, so it doesn't bother me.

If you want to hear a live Blue Oyster Cult recording that does sound excellent, check out the superb Some Enchanted Evening (Columbia JC35563), a later 1978 LP which has a punchy, dynamic, wideband mix to complement stunning renditions of songs like "(Don't Fear) the Reaper," "ETI," "Godzilla" and other towering titans of the BOC canon.

While you're at it, if you really want to hear Blue Oyster Cult at their live best, check them out the next time they play in your burg. They're still burnin', and sound better than ever—you won't be disappointed.

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Is there a reader of this magazine who has never heard The Allman Brothers Band Live at Fillmore East? I suppose there must be, but when I was growing up their popularity was overwhelming. I remember my first week as a college freshman up at Albany State in 1973, when I walked around Colonial Quad and literally dozens of people were blasting the Allman Brothers out their dorm room windows—I could choose whatever song I wanted to hear just by picking the right spot around the quad! The band that, along with Capricorn Records, put Southern Rock on the map, they were far more versatile and virtuosic than any such simple appellation could suffice to describe—yet they were imbued with the musical influences and lifestyle of the South and their music could have come from nowhere else.

The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East is their monument, their masterpiece. From the first roaring Duane Allman slide guitar notes leading off "Statesboro Blues," you know you're in for a hair-raising musical ride. The six-piece band-Duane Allman and Dickey Betts on guitars, Gregg Allman on organ and vocals, Berry Oakley on bass and Jai Johanny Johanson and Butch Trucks on drums and percussion-creates a huge interlocking ensemble sound, rhythmically charged and tight as hell.

Most remarkable, however, is their ability to stretch and soar on dizzying improvisational flights, fueled by the twin-guitar virtuosity of Duane Allman and Betts, and the album's double length provides plenty of room for them to fly (two sides are each taken up by a single song, the 19-minute-plus "You Don't Love Me" and the immortal, 22-minutes-and-change "Whipping Post," and the entire LP contains only seven songs.)

And man, can these guys play. Gregg Allman's vocals so intense I don't know how he didn't implode while singing them, and his organ playing is rich and deeply soulful. The two drummers and Oakley bob and weave and breathe along with the music like some kind of living thing, all the while holding down some of the most badass grooves ever heard on this planet. And Duane Allman and Betts...what can I say without exhausting my feeble bag of superlatives? Complementing each other like no other dual-guitar team before or since (with the exception of Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West), both men play brilliantly throughout, either trading solos or playing their trademark intricate two-guitar harmony leads, as on the spellbinding "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed." When this album first hit the scene, it was almost shocking in its effect and blew peoples' minds the way few albums have before or since. This may be the most influential live rock album ever.

I'm happy to say the sound quality is terrific! My original pink-label Capricorn pressing (originally I had a yellow-label Atco pressing, but like I said, wore it out) has a superb tonal balance, with solid, punchy and tight bass, a warm, rich midrange and open, extended highs. Detail resolution is excellent, imaging is good if not laser-precise (and you wouldn't hear such artificially-etched imaging at a rock concert anyway, for fark's sake) and yes, there's even a credible soundstage, wide and somewhat deep, with a good mix of direct and hall sound.

When you turn this up, you are there at the Fillmore East in 1971, my friends—this is one of the most well-recorded live albums ever. I've never heard any of the CD re-issues, and the last time I played my Atco pressing was on a stereo worth about $200 so I can't comment on that either, but this pink-label pressing—man! It's worth the effort and expense to find a copy.

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Blue Oyster Cult: Heaven Forbid
CMC International 06076 86241-2 (CD)

Music 10
Sound 8

I couldn't talk about Blue Oyster Cult without mentioning their fantastic new Heaven Forbid album, the band's first in years, and it could be argued, their best. The album finds the band rocking harder than ever (!), with a fierce intensity that puts legions of younger and lesser bands to utter shame. Although this is no album of monolithic, monotonous hard rock droning-from the beginning, BOC were far more musically multifaceted than the average band, and the songs here span a wide range of moods, tempos and styles, from the pile-driving power of "The Power Underneath Despair" to the sweeping beauty and majesty of "Harvest Moon."

The band's lyrics are also as thoughtful and provocative as ever, but with a harder, grittier edge reflecting the harder, grittier times we live in. The leadoff track, "See You In Black," decries spousal abuse in true BOC style—the protagonist would like to see the woman he loves at her abusive husband's grave, and other songs deal with equally harsh realities, from senseless shootings ("Hammer Back") to facing the ugly truth of a life gone astray "Cold Gray Light of Dawn"). Not all is unrelieved darkness—"Real World" is a wry observation on the strangeness of today's reality ("The real world/Is bizarre enough for me") and "Live For Me" is simply one of the most life-affirming songs I've ever heard (I won't ruin it for you here).

And the playing and arrangements are simply stunning. Listening to the droning crap on the radio today, you almost forget there are bands out there capable of this kind of virtuosity—walloping, intricate drumming, slashing guitars, start-and-stop-on-a-dime ensemble playing, gorgeous multi-part vocal harmonies and lush, layered arrangements. And Buck Dharma's playing is amazingly, incredibly, even better than ever, soaring to greater heights than ever with some of the most brilliantly inventive lead guitar ever recorded. Sure, I'm a fan, but let me tell you this is one of the finest albums to come out in the last decade, and I don't care what kind of music you like or think you like—if you love good music, period, you owe it to yourself to hear this album, my album of the year by a landslide.

The sound quality is extremely good, with an especially "open" mix that let's you "hear into" the often complex and always carefully crafted arrangements. While the sound has something of a hard upper-midrange edge to it, the midrange is clear and focused and the bass is taut and powerful. There's plenty of depth and detail, and unlike most barely-listenable pop and rock productions, studio processing is used to good artistic effect—like the hard compression on the acoustic guitars in "X-Ray Eyes" that make the attack on each chord "pop" and crash through the mix. Dynamic range is excellent, and the guitar tones are to die for, ranging from the immense crunch of "See You In Black" to Dharma's fat-yet-cutting guitar tone.

Don't miss this one, a dazzling effort from one of America's greatest rock bands. Highest recommendation.